FREE SCHOOL BOOKS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 405, 2 June 1905, Page 2

FREE SCHOOL BOOKS.

Mk W. Gray, Chief Inspector ol Schools, has returned from America convinced that a country which professes to give its children free education should provide them with free school books. He points out that the case for free text books is well stated in the annual report for 1903 of the St. Louis Board of Eduoation.

In that report is the following paragraph, which is deserving of very serious consideration :—" The reasons for furnishing to the children free text-books are tho same as those on which free education itself rests. There is no argument in favour of the lattor that does not apply to the former. There is no objection to free books that doe 3 not apply with equal force to tho free education. Books are absolutely necessary to carry on school work. If it is the duty of tho State to provide free instruction, this includes of necessity, and for the same reason, provision for the indispensable conditions and agencies of instruction. To provide the child with an education free but to mako him pay for the things which he needs in order to avail himself of this privilege, would soom as contradictory as to construe tho duty of the State to maintain schoo's to mean that it must provide school buildings but not teacher?. .The domand for 'freo books ia undeniably implied in the State's duty to provide freo education." A vory large number of the chief cities and States have already carried this principle into operation, and it is only a matter of a few years till the plan will havo been adopted throughout tho wide bounds of the great American Continent.